


Elias Bouchard; in his office; with a rusty pipe

by commissions (so_psychso)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Gore, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Murder, Recreational Drug Use, Revenge, Set sometime in Season 3 probably, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:35:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24491395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/so_psychso/pseuds/commissions
Summary: Elias has always underestimated Jon, such a shame there's not time enough to regret that.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 11
Kudos: 90





	Elias Bouchard; in his office; with a rusty pipe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tim-stonker](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=tim-stonker).



> This fic is a commission.
> 
> If you want to request something, please feel free to shoot a message over to my [tumblr](https://master-fiber.tumblr.com/)!

There’s a distinct sense of anticlimax as he climbs the stairs; it sits onerously between his shoulder blades, forcing a hunched posture that makes the task at hand all that more impossible. Still, he trods onwards, numb to the agonies littering his body and mind. The only sensation that bears any real presence is the cold weight in his hand, the smooth length of metal unhurried in its task and yet so terribly sure of itself. Because there’s certainty. Bone jarring conviction about what is soon to transpire. 

Elias Bouchard will die. As he visited such violence upon Leitner and Gertrude, so too will Jon see his brains smashed in, bone shard and blood and grey matter, and then everything will be okay. The yoke of the Institute will lift, and he will leave. All of them will. 

And all Jon has to do is climb these stairs, open the door to Elias’s office, and kill him.

The pipe is, perhaps, a bit baudy. It’s not the original, of course—that’s somewhere in the limbo of police evidence—but it took no considerable effort to find a suitable clone, and the justice was too deliriously ironic for Jon not to indulge. Just as well, he still doesn’t know how to use (let alone procure) a gun, and lord knows where his axe went. 

It’s grounding, the sensation, and he’s careful not to let it clang against any of the stairs as he ascends them. Like he’s on his way to a performance review. Just another goddamn day at the Magnus fucking Institute.

He’s not surprised to find the door to Elias’s office ajar.

He’s not surprised to find Elias reclining at his desk.

What does catch him off guard, is the cloud of smoke that wafts indelicately through the air around Elias’s person, cloyingly pungent and very obviously _not_ tobacco.

“Are you serious,” Jon deadpans, unable to curb his disdain.

“Every man is entitled to his last pleasures, Jonathan,” Elias returns, and even with the accompanying image of an immaculately rolled joint in his hand, his tone sits composed to a bow-string tautness 

“If I’m to be yours, then you’ll pardon that I’m a little less _inspired_.”

Unmoved by the threat, Jon scowls, no longer at the mercy of believing that _bullshit_ “If I die you die” crap. Curious to a fault, he can’t help drawing out the cliche.

So he asks, “Not even going to try to stop me?” though it’s more out of courtesy than actual inquiry.

Elias hums, and brings the joint up to his smiling lips. 

“I may not be capable of surmising the future, Archivist, but I’ve every confidence in your ineptitude when it best suits my ends.”

“You don’t think I can do it,” Jon spits, his grip tightening around the pipe as Elias sucks in a deep drag.

On his exhale, he grins. 

“On the contrary, you almost certainly could. But I _know_ your mind Jon, I know the uncomplicated little morals and humanities that still root themselves in your _true_ magnificence. And you’d—what—succumb to that for some petty revenge? For _them_?”

At this, he gestures downward.

“Tim would see your own brains dashed just as well as mine, Melanie, too. Daisy is a rabid dog, and Basira’s even quicker to switch sides for whatever suits her agenda. And Martin? Even your most _faithful_ acolyte, Jon, I’m sure I needn’t describe how his trust is waning, hm?”

“You don’t know _anything_ ,” Jon hisses, eyes stinging, though whether from tears or the acrid tang of the godawful weed, it’s not clear.

“Don’t I though?” Elias smirks, taking another drag.

And something just… breaks, the scaffolding of all this preamble buckling in, Jon acting on an instinct as sudden as it is utterly foreign.

One moment, he’s watching Elias’s mouth curl around another sneer, hissing smoke between immaculate teeth. The next, Jon’s across the room, arm raised, pulse howling in his veins, _delighting_ in the flash of surprise that mars Elias’s expression. 

Then blood. Bone shard. Grey matter and gore. Just as Jon wanted. Just as he _knew_ himself capable of. Again, he brings the pipe down, each swing devastatingly precise, meeting its quarry with sickening _crunches._

“This! Is for! Sasha!” Jon screams, his hands slick with red. “And _everyone_ you’ve destroyed. Every! Life! You’ve ruined! Burn. In. _Hell_!”

His final sentiment he punctuates with the heaviest blow, caving in Elias’s head entirely, leaving little else but a bloody stump atop a gore-stained suit.

Only then does Jon let the pipe clatter to the floor. Only then does he stagger backwards, gasping for air, shoulders shrieking for reprieve.

It takes a second for it to settle in, for Jon to realize.

He’s not dead, and the oppressive _watching, looking, knowing_ that has adorned his person like a funeral shroud since the moment he first stepped foot over this wretched place’s threshold… It’s gone. Dissolved away to nothingness, leaving him lightheaded and laughing.

“ _Holy shit_ ,” he hiccups, tears pouring down his cheeks, blood-stained hand charting a course for his mouth before he remembers himself. This leaves other nonsensical things to be said, but after a moment it devolves into more gibberish. 

_Fuck fuck fuck_ , chants his mind, and he braces himself on the desk’s edge, the only place close enough to do so and at least slightly unblemished by blood. 

Next. There has to be a next. Something to come… after this. Run down to the Archives and tell everyone? Surely they’ve _felt_ it but… And the police, and… murder. He’s _murdered_ someone and—

No. He will _not_ let anything steal this victory. This _freedom_.

Looking up, he drinks in the sickening sight of Elias’s corpse, savoring it like a car crash, a wound, a… thing, some other grand metaphor he can’t piece together coherently enough. Not that much else can do justice to the raw sight of it. Blood, so much blood, and his skull reduced to half of itself, all dark scarlet and off-yellow bone poking through. 

Jon has to look away, his stomach lurching. Which is when his gaze happens upon the rest of Elias, specifically his hand, the one that had been holding the joint. It’s still there, neatly nestled between index and middle finger, and a strange sense of euphoric mania overtakes Jon.

With as little autonomy as he employed whilst beating the man’s head in, so too does Jon find himself divorced again of better sense, and he plucks up the joint. It’s still smoldering, and he brings it to his quivering lips, wincing at the burnt taste, but inhales like his sanity depends on it.

It very well might, and it’s nothing like a cigarette, and he coughs, violently, but still goes back for more. Pulling, pulling, and wheezing into the quiet office air, drinking in Elias’s last pleasure alongside his own.

“Told you I could do it,” he rasps to the unhearing corpse, and flicks the roach into what was probably Elias’s left eye. 

It’s all just blood and guts and ash, now, and Jon turns on his heel, feeling floaty and serene and _fucking_ terrified as he departs the office.

After all, he has some very good news to share.

**Author's Note:**

> As the beginning note would imply, this fic was commissioned, the proceeds of which will be donated to charity. If you'r hankering for something lads, feel free to hit me up


End file.
